In C. Verrem

What shall I say next? The Halicyans, the settlers among whom pay tenths, themselves have their lauds free from taxes. Were not they also compelled to give to the same Turpio fifteen thousand sesterces, when their tenths had been sold for a hundred medimni? If, as you are especially anxious to do, you could prove that these compliments all went to the farmers, and that none of them reached you, still these sums, taken and extorted as they were by your violence and injustice, ought to ensure your conviction; but, as you cannot persuade any one that you were so foolish as to wish Apronius and Turpio, two slaves, to become rich at your own risk and that of your children, do you think that any one will doubt that through the instrumentality of those emissaries all this money was really procured for you?

Again, Symmachus, a slave of Venus, is sent as farmer to Segesta, a city exempt from such taxes; he brings letters from Verres, to order the cultivators to appear in a court of some other city than their own, contrary to every resolution of the senate, to all their rights and privileges, and to the Rupilian law. Hear the letters which he sent to the Segestans. [The letters of Caius Verres are read.] Now learn by one bargain made with an honourable and respected man, how this slave of Venus insulted the cultivators of the soil; for there are other instances of this sort.

There is a man of the name of Diocles, a citizen of Panormus, surnamed Phimes, an illustrious man, and of high reputation as an agriculturist, he rented a farm in the Segestan district, (for there are no traders in that place,) for six thousand sesterces; after having been assaulted by this slave of Venus, he settled with him to give him sixteen thousand, six hundred, and sixty-four sesterces. You may learn this from Verres's own accounts. [The items entered under the name of Diocles of Panormus are read.] Anneius Brocchus also, a senator, a man of a reputation, and of a virtue with which you are all acquainted, was compelled to give money also besides corn to this same Symmachus. Was such a man, a senator of the Roman people, a subject of profit to a slave of Venus, while you were praetor?

Even if you were not aware that this body excelled all others in dignity, were you not at least aware of this, that it furnished the judges? Previously, when the equestrian order furnished the judges, infamous and rapacious magistrates in the provinces were subservient to the farmers; they honoured all who were in their employ; every Roman knight whom they saw in the province they pursued with attentions and courtesies; and that conduct was not so advantageous to the guilty, as it was a hindrance to many if they had acted in any respect contrary to the advantage or inclination of that body. This sort of principle was somehow or other diligently reserved among them as if by common consent, that whoever had thought any Roman knight deserving of any affront, was to be considered by their whole order as deserving of every possible misfortune.

Did you so despise the order of senators, did you so reduce everything to the standard of your own insults and caprices, had you so deliberated and fixed it in your own mind as an invariable rule, to reject as judges every one who dwelt in Sicily, or who had been in Sicily while you were praetor, that it never occurred to you that still you must come before judges of the same order? in whose minds, even if there were no indignation from any personal injury done to themselves, still there would be this thought, that they were affronted in the affront offered to another, and that the dignity of their order was contemptuously treated and trampled on, which, O judges, appears to me not to be endured with patience, for insult has in it a sting which modest and virtuous men can with difficulty put up with.

You have plundered the Sicilians, for indeed the provincials are accustomed to obtain no revenge amid their wrongs. You have harassed the brokers, for they seldom come to Rome, and never of their own accord. You gave up a Roman knight to the ill-treatment of Apronius. To be sure; for what harm can they do you now, when they cannot be judges? What will you say when you treat senators also with the greatest violence? what else can you say but this, “Give me up that senator also, in order that the most honourable name of senator may appear to exist not only to excite the envy of the ignorant, but also to attract the insults of the worthless.”

Nor did he do this in the case of Anneius alone, but in the instance of every senator, so that the name of that order had not so much influence in procuring honour as insult for its members. In the case of Caius Cassius, a most illustrious and most gallant man, though he was consul at that very time, in the first year of his praetorship, he behaved with such injustice, that, as his wife, a woman of the highest respectability, had lands in Leontini, inherited from her father, he ordered all her crops to be taken away for tenths. You shall have him as a witness in this cause, O Verres, since you have taken care not to have him as a judge.

But you, O judges, ought to think that there is some community of interests, some close connection existing between the members of our body; many offices are imposed on this our order, many toils, many dangers, not only from the laws and courts of justice, but also from vague reports, and from the critical character of the times; so that this order is, as it were, exposed to view, and set on an eminence, in order, as it seems, to be the more easily caught by every blast of envy. In so miserable and unfair a condition of life, shall we not retain even the honour of not appearing vile and contemptible in the eyes of our own magistrates, when we appear before them to obtain our rights?